China trip exposes LSC students to a different world

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A group of students from Beijing Wenhui Middle School challenge Maddie Jones (center), a junior at Jefferson High School, and Charlie Long, a eighth-grader at Tecumseh Junior High, to jump rope games during the LSC students’ recent visit to China.
Amy Long/For the Journal & Courier

Sun Ye (center), the Chinese language teacher at Jefferson High School and Tecumseh Junior High School, explored the Forbidden City in Beijing with her students Clare Long (left) and Sofia Barford-Danner.
Amy Long/For the Journal & Courier

A group of students from the Lafayette School Corporation gathered in a small Beijing apartment and listened to their host, Mr. Liu (left), explain the intricacies of cricket fighting.
Amy Long/For the Journal & Courier

A group of students from the Lafayette School Corporation, along with their Chinese language teacher, Sun Ye (right), gathered in a small Beijing apartment and listened to their host, Mr. Liu (left), explain the intricacies of cricket fighting.
Amy Long/For the Journal & Courier

A group from the Lafayette School Corporation, including (left to right) Amy Long, Noah Caldwell, teacher Sun Ye, and Charlie Long, climbed the Great Wall during a visit to China in October.
Photo provided

A group from the Lafayette School Corporation, including (left to right) Clare Long, Sofia Barford-Danner, Maddie Thoennes and Charlie Long, all students at Tecumseh Junior High School, visited the Temple of Heaven in Beijing during a recent trip to China.
Amy Long/For the Journal & Courier

A group of students from Lafayette School Corporation walked along the wall that surrounds the city of Xi’an in China. The wall, which is 12 meters high and 12-14 meters wide at the top, was built in the 14th century.
Amy Long/For the Journal & Courier

A group of students from Lafayette School Corporation poses on the wall that surrounds the city of Xi’an in China. The wall, which is 12 meters high and 12-14 meters wide at the top, was built in the 14th century.
Amy Long/For the Journal & Courier

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Sun Ye (center), the Chinese language teacher at Jefferson High School and Tecumseh Junior High School, explored the Forbidden City in Beijing with her students Clare Long (left) and Sofia Barford-Danner.(Photo: Amy Long/For the Journal & Courier)

It was a bucket-list kind of trip: a grand, whirlwind tour of China that included visits to Beijing, Xi’an and Shanghai.

In the last days of October, during the Lafayette School Corporation’s week-long fall break, 13 students from Tecumseh Junior High School and Jefferson High School embarked on that expedition with their Chinese language teacher, Sun Ye, two school board members and an LSC administrator. I was one of four parents (and one grandparent) tagging along.

For many of us, the journey was a chance to cross things off the list of Things We’ve Only Dreamed of Doing. We scaled the Great Wall. We toured the Forbidden City. We rode bikes along the 14th-century ramparts that surround the city of Xi’an. We faced down legions of Terracotta Warriors. We peered down at a sprawling city from the 100th floor of the Shanghai World Financial Center building. Most of us had never been to China before. About half the group had never traveled outside the U.S.

But while checking off a list of tourist to-dos was certainly exhilarating, we were only halfway through our first day of sight-seeing when it became clear that the smaller, quieter, less grand and more surprising moments would make the trip truly memorable.

After a full morning that included a visit to a local middle school, a march past Tiananmen Square (still barricaded to the public for the Communist Party Congress, which had ended the day before), and a brisk push through the unimaginably vast Forbidden City, our group of 22 crammed into a tiny apartment in an historic Hutong neighborhood for a lunch served by a local family.

Straining to hear over the piercing trills of a large cricket confined in a tiny cage near the front door, we piled our plates with dumplings, rice and vegetables, and listened as our Chinese guide, Li Jun, translated polite questions and answers between visitors and host.

We learned that our host, Mr. Liu, taught Kung Fu for 40 years, that his family has lived in this home for six generations, and that the apartment — situated within a maze of narrow alleys brimming with bicycles and parked cars and lines of drying laundry — doesn’t have a private bathroom. The family — along with most of the residents in this centuries-old neighborhood — uses a public restroom down the street.

A group of students from the Lafayette School Corporation, along with their Chinese language teacher, Sun Ye (right), gathered in a small Beijing apartment and listened to their host, Mr. Liu (left), explain the intricacies of cricket fighting.(Photo: Amy Long/For the Journal & Courier)

Finally, someone asked about the screeching cricket. Mr. Liu’s face lit up, and he launched into an extended, animated explanation of his favorite pastime, cricket fighting. He gleefully showed off the box he uses as an arena, along with a little cricket whistle, a tiny net for corralling the insects, an array of toothpick-sized tools used to tickle and provoke them, and even a teeny-weeny casket — for the loser.

It’s a big business, Mr. Liu, explained. In his neighborhood, people lose their cars and their homes over cricket fighting.

We were enchanted. One innocent question about a vociferous cricket launched a completely unexpected and thoroughly enlightening response about something we had never imagined.

That, after all, was the point of the trip. “I think when we are around people who are just like us, we become closed-minded,” said Dr. Katie Reckard, the LSC director of secondary education, who accompanied the group. When we are in new situations, “we become more open-minded and open to people who are different.”

“I think that China is a lot more interesting than America. It really gives me an insight into an alternate universe,” said Sofia Barford-Danner, 13, an eighth-grader at Tecumseh Junior High, who was dazzled by the royal splendor of the ancient Forbidden City as well as the bustle of the outdoor street markets. “I’m used to living in America and knowing the culture. In China, it’s very different. … I think China made me view the world in a different way.”

Many of us came to understand the significance of the trip when we were pushed outside of our comfort zones. For me, it happened over breakfast one morning. I was enjoying my fried rice and sautéed cabbage, which seemed especially chewy, when the kids’ Chinese teacher, Sun Ye, sat down next to me and pointed out that I was actually eating jellyfish. “You’re kidding, right?” I asked. Then I surprised myself by cleaning my plate.

Emboldened by that experience, the next day I challenged myself to try the fried scorpions, grasshoppers, cicadas and silk worms peddled by a street vendor. And I was delighted when many of the students followed suit.

Students from the Lafayette School Corporation tasted fried scorpions, grasshoppers, cicadas and silk worms in Xi’an during a recent visit to China.(Photo: Amy Long/For the Journal & Courier)

Jaden Cushman, 18, a senior at Jeff, had also traveled to Ireland with the school’s Varsity choir in June. As far as comfort zones go, Ireland was a piece of cake, Cushman said. Everything about the trip to China was more of a challenge.

“There was more unknown, which I liked much more,” Cushman said. “I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what’s around the corner. I don’t know what people are saying. I don’t know what I’m putting in my mouth. I understand zero percent of it, and love 100 percent of it.”

For Maddie Jones, a 16-year-old Jeff junior, our visit to a Beijing middle school on the first day of the trip had the most impact. In the schoolyard, we met a class of eighth-graders who had organized some outdoor games and races. Later, inside their classroom, the Chinese students showcased their talents in music and dance. We ended the morning with a question-and-answer session between Chinese and American students; the kids asked each other about their favorite activities, their pets and their daily routines, and learned that they have generally the same interests.

“The school visit was my favorite,” says Jones, “getting to interact with someone that’s my age who lives so far away, to see that in our daily lives we do a lot of the same things, but in a different way.”

“I’m hoping they can be more open because they see on the other side of the globe there is a group of people that may have a different diet, they may have different habits, but they are all the same,” said Sun, who is originally from Liaoning Province in northeast China, and who has been teaching Chinese for LSC for the last seven years. “This is something that can get them closer to some people or some place outside of their world.”

Li Jun, the Shanghai-based guide who accompanied us for the entire week, concurred. “From interactions with local people, [the students] notice that people are all the same. People smile. People react. People have a sense of humor. People are curious,” he said.

And while our sameness brings us together, Li noted, we can also notice and appreciate our differences. “Your view is getting bigger, your heart is getting bigger and your understanding is getting bigger,” he said. And then he paraphrased a Chinese proverb:

“Traveling a thousand miles is better than reading a thousand books. But meeting a thousand people is better than traveling a thousand miles.”